Cristiano Ronaldo and Other All-Time Top Goalscorers

In case you didn’t hear, and I doubt there’s a football fan who didn’t hear about it, Cristiano Ronaldo scored a brace yesterday in Real Madrid’s Champions League win over Malmö, which brought the total amount of goals he scored for Real Madrid to 323, just like Raul, Real’s legen-wait-for-it-dary all-time leading scorer. Well, now there are two all-time leading scorers, and Cristiano will obviously claim the #1 spot all to himself in a few days.

Cristiano’s total is time-and-space-bending crazy, because while Raul reached 323 goals over the course of 16 long seasons and 741 matches, Cristiano achieved it only 8 matches into his 7th season in Real Madrid, and in a mere 308 matches. Yes, he scores more than a goal per game. What in the name of all fucks?!

And it’s not like Raul’s record was one of those soft records, like Italy’s all-time goalscoring record for the national team (see here). Raul was a great player and a very good scorer, His record was (well, actually is, but it will be was soon) very solid, and nobody ever imagined that someone will manage to break it in less than 7 seasons…

So as you can see, Cristiano’s record is no slouch. This list I made is by no means a definitive list of all the all-time goalscoring records for all of Europe’s teams, but it still encompasses the bulk of the greatest European teams evar and as such allows us to make some comparisons between the best all-time scorers for the best teams. The best record in terms of goals scored is Gerd Müller’s 525 goals for Bayern Munich, in only 586 matches, although one can argue that Eusebio’s 474 goals in only 440 matches for Benfica is more impressive. That is over 200 goals more than Cristiano, which shows you what an amazing scorer Gerd was.

But still, Cristiano can look in the eyes to almost every guy on the list. Only six clubs here have better records than his (and Raul’s. Let us not forget Raul for now. We can totally forget him in a few days) record for Real Madrid, and he will probably surpass Liverpool’s (346 goals), PSV Eindhoven’s (337 goals) and Porto’s (352 goals) records by the end of this season. And still one must remember that all of these records were set via years and years of playing for the same club, while Cristiano is only in the beginning of his 7th season for Real. I don’t know how many years he will play in Madrid, but what he has accomplished in the 6+ he played so far is nothing short of otherworldly.

And speaking of otherwordly, obviously one cannot write a post on Cristiano without mentioning Messi. Lionel’s record is extraordinary. He is only 28 years old and already scored 418 goals for Barcelona. How far can he take this record? I reckon that 3 years from now he will be the player with the most goals on this list, surpassing Müller’s total for Bayern Munich.

I don’t really have a take-home-message in this post. I guess I just want to look at those amazing numbers in awe, and thank Allah that we are fortunate enough to be living in an era with Messi and Cristiano, who made 50-goald-seasons look like something ordinary. 10 years from now we will deeply miss both of them and dream of the next player who might come close to those unbelievable numbers…

“God damn it Michael, this is a post about me, why do you have to put Messi in too?!”